


it's not much, but my money's on you

by singmyheart



Series: a man's gonna sweet talk [1]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ambiguous Relationships, Drinking & Talking, F/F, F/M, complicated adult emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-31 04:59:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10892205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singmyheart/pseuds/singmyheart
Summary: Hamilton laughs, and it’s hollow. He’s clearly playing at dangerous, confident, but it doesn’t fit him, sits across his shoulders like a cheap suit. She wonders who he’s trying to channel as he says, “That’s such anuglyword, isn’t it?” Tips his wrist, swirls the contents of his glass, idly. “I’m just making conversation, Maria.” Her name sounds wrong in his mouth. He leans in a little closer and does touch her, then, a hand on her elbow; perfectly innocent-looking, considering how loud it is in here.





	it's not much, but my money's on you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [canniballecters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/canniballecters/gifts).



 

 

This place is dead, which she should have expected. Just her, and the handful of old men drinking red wine that are like wallpaper in every bar in the city. It's nearly ten on a Tuesday and she's been here almost an hour, care of a date that had bailed last minute (and _date_ is a generous descriptor; that's what she gets for resorting to Tinder). The bar's a dive — not a staph-infection kind of dive, but with an almost comforting seediness, low ceiling, battered leather booths. She's been nursing a beer, one of the few on the menu she'd recognized, intending to just finish it and head home.

A woman steps onto the low stage at the front of the long, narrow room, takes a seat at the piano. No real purpose to the movement, like she's just found it there. Gestures back to the bartender to cut the music crackling in the speakers, mouths _thank you,_ runs through a couple of chords. Maria’s not expecting much, truth be told — and then she starts to play. And then she starts to _sing._

She doesn’t seem to have anything in mind, medleys a few old Gershwin tunes on the fly with an ease that suggests they're standbys. She plays for maybe half an hour, casually, chatting with the men nearest her and shutting down their leering evidently without bruising their egos too much. Maria realizes, after quite some time, that no one else is as rapt as she is — not that they're ignoring this, but they're certainly not stunned, turned inside out. She forgets about her single drink entirely and when she comes back to her senses and finishes it she does so with a wince; it's completely flat.

“I recognize that look,” the bartender says. “That  _holy shit_ look. You've never heard her sing before, have you?”

“No,” Maria admits. “I've — never been here before, actually. She do that often?”

“Couple times a week.”

She's probably never been so grateful to have gotten stood up, she thinks. Slides a ten across the bar, zips up her jacket. “I'll be back, then, I'm sure.”

“Anytime,” the guy says. “Night.”

She leaves just as the singer starts to make her way back toward the bar. It's cold, just starting to snow; she pulls the collar of her coat up against the wind and heads for home.

 

*

 

The Tinder guy texts for a makeup date almost a week later and Maria ignores it; Saturday night finds her pushing through a crowd of overheated bodies to make her way back toward the bar. The place is too crowded to make sense up against the wistful standards the singer’s playing, alone up there under a spotlight, flower in her hair like Billie Holiday. Maria has half a gin martini spilled on her for her trouble but she gets there eventually, ends up standing in front of the same bartender from the other night. Handsome guy in a knit cap, broad, putting his shirtsleeves to work. It takes a second to register but he recognizes her too, leans forward so they can hear each other. “Welcome back. IPA, right?”

“I'm impressed.”

“I'm good with faces.” He slides the pint across the bartop, winks at her, and somehow it's kind of charming instead of cringey. She likes him, she decides.

She doesn’t get how any of these people can be focused on anything other than the stage — she doesn't know a lot about music, but she damn sure knows talent when she sees it. This woman’s voice is unbelievable, crystal clear (Maria gets the impression she could hit the back wall without quite so much help from the sound system), and her touch on the keys is light, deft.

When Maria turns back toward the bar someone else has joined the bartender, dark-haired guy, a head shorter. He's got his chin in his hand, gazing up at the stage, nothing short of adoring. He catches her eye, grins. “Still knocks me out,” he says.

“I don't blame you, she's amazing.”

“Isn't she, though.” He sounds proud, and then adds, “I'm her husband.” So, that explains it. Cocks his head at her, dissecting. A statement: “We've met before, I think.”

“Have we?” Maria’s embarrassed that she can't place him, but that could mean anything, and she's not about to admit it.

“Reynolds,” he says suddenly, snaps his fingers. “Right? You're James’s wife?”

Well, he's not entirely wrong. And on consideration he does look kind of familiar — an old drinking buddy, she thinks. He must've been more on the periphery of James’s social circle; they've met a few times but it's been years. Of course it has. “Maria,” she says, extends a hand.

“Alex Hamilton,” he says — right, that's right — and instead of a handshake he goes for that annoying delicate clutch thing, and then doubles down and kisses the back of her hand. Christ, is he for real. “Good to see you again, Maria Reynolds.”

“It's Lewis these days, actually.” Keeps her tone light, braces herself.

He doesn't ask, though, just says, “Ah. Apologies,” easily enough. The ice in her throat that comes up at times like these doesn't melt.

The singer finishes up and, to scattered applause, informs them she’s done for the evening. Stops here and there on her way back to chat (and, it looks like, accept more than a few compliments) and when she reaches the bar leans forward on her elbows, raps a knuckle on the wood. “Water, please, babe?”

Hamilton’s already pushing a glass toward her, straw and a little umbrella and everything. “On the house,” he says, and she rolls her eyes.

A moment passes, and Maria says, “You’re really talented.”

Hamilton laughs at her reaction, a smile and duck of the head, almost bashful. “I’ve been telling her that for years.” He’s clearly playing it up some, the look-how-married-we-are thing; it’s kind of grating but harmless, Maria figures. “Anyway, Bets — this is Maria. Maria, my wife, Eliza.”

“Thanks,” Eliza offers politely, “nice to meet you.”

“You, too.”

Hamilton comes out from behind the bar to sling an arm around Eliza’s waist, tug her to his side. Up close like this — it’s hard to tell for sure in the dim light, but to Maria’s eye he looks a good deal older than either her or Eliza. Ten, fifteen years. “You got a face that could start wars, baby,” he tells Eliza, in the tone someone else might use to say _I love you._ Fond.

“Aaron’s here,” she says, and his adoring look is replaced by one of long-suffering agony so quickly Maria has to stifle a laugh.

“Fuck,” he mutters, sighing, and then offers Eliza his elbow. “Well. Duty calls, my dear.”

“Nice meeting you, Maria,” Eliza tells her once more, and lets Hamilton pull her away into the crowd.

Something compels her to keep watching them — though she tells herself not to stare, to just finish her drink and go, she finds her eye drawn back to them more than once. Even from a distance she can tell they’re schmoozing, or Hamilton is: shaking hands, kissing cheeks. She doesn’t get  the chance to catch up with either one of them again before she calls it a night.

Once she’s home, curled up in front of the radiator with a tea and her ancient brick of a laptop, she googles Alex Hamilton. It’s a little surprising, how much she finds: a couple of articles about the club closing, years back, and reopening under his ownership. Tour dates, album reviews (those are few and far between, none recent or especially complimentary). A few shaky iPhone videos of him behind a drum kit, onstage with a quartet. It’s kind of a shame that for whatever reason they seemingly never took off, because they’re good, even to her untrained ear. There’s one video that kind of grabs her, he and Eliza on a stage. An old Ella Fitzgerald tune she’s sure she recognizes, _no, they can’t take that away from me._ Hamilton’s not much of a singer and he looks a little lost without the protection of a kit but he’s not bad, and it’s sweet. They look happy. He’s in a tux, bowtie loose, Eliza in a floor-length dress with flowers in her hair. Someone’s wedding, maybe, or their own. They kiss as the song finishes, laughing.

 

*

 

Maria keeps going back, for no reason she can name. It’s like tonguing at a cut on the roof of her mouth, doing it without thinking, even though it’s probably better left alone. She’ll sit and nurse a pint and shoot the shit with Mulligan when it’s not busy, and watch Hamilton press the flesh, watch him watch Eliza. They talk now and again; before long she’s decided there’s something about him she doesn’t like. It’s not just when he’s drunk and it’s not just the way he touches Eliza (possessive, if subtle about it. Maria could set her watch by it: some guy at the bar making a meal out of looking her up and down and he’ll tug her a little closer, hand on the small of her back). No, it’s more that he says _we,_ that he talks about her talent like it has anything to do with him. That, and there’s just something _off_ about him, dishonest. He’s charming, sure, but it seems faked, not quite natural, this undercurrent of insincerity. She’s seen it before, she knows his type, and she doesn’t like it.  

She talks to Eliza, too, when she can. Eliza — she’s a little reserved, cool in a way that seems to offset Hamilton’s fire. Maria has the impression that Eliza’s approval is both valuable and hard-won; she doesn’t often find herself in the position of wanting someone to like her, but at some point (privately and grudgingly) concedes that that’s what this is.

“Ham says he knows your husband, is that right?” Eliza asks once, toying absently with the straw in her glass (nobody calls him by his first name, seems like; even Eliza addresses him with various terms of endearment most of the time). They’ve been doing the six degrees of separation thing, playing the who-do-we-have-in-common game. It’s quite a number of people, actually; Maria wonders why she hadn’t met Eliza until just recently. She drags her gaze up from where Eliza’s dress lies over her collarbone, the delicate necklace at her throat, and looks her in the eye.

“Well. Late husband,” Maria clarifies, and braces.

Sure enough, there’s the shift in tone, the knit of Eliza’s brow. “I’m sorry,” she says. A beat. “When did that happen?”

“Few years ago.” She really doesn’t want to have this conversation right now (or ever) so she’s praying that Eliza will just let it drop, move on. Thankfully Eliza seems to catch that, and after a moment or two of awkwardness they make their way back to safer conversational ground.

 

*

 

Hamilton manages to get himself in a fight once — she doesn’t catch any of the prelude but there’s a sudden outburst of noise, a scuffle, a tangle of men’s voices. Sound of a glass breaking. Mulligan hauls Hamilton out of the mess by the shirt, not unlike a kitten being picked up by the scruff of the neck. Lifts him easily off his feet and away, deaf to his protests. “Alright, alright, fuck,” Hamilton says, shoves at his shoulder; Mulligan doesn’t twitch. Hamilton’s clearly wasted, looks pissed, soaking in someone’s spilled drink. “Motherfucker,” he spits in the general direction of the other guy and his friends, who are already on their way out. She watches the two of them for a moment, Hamilton tense and Mulligan eminently reasonable, appears to be giving him some variation on the sober friend’s “don’t be a fucking idiot” spiel.

 

*

 

Eliza’s got a bandage on her forearm the next night, which she catches Maria looking at. “It’s nothing,” she says hastily, “just — a glass broke, and…” Trails off, gestures vaguely.

“You okay?” Maria asks, just to ask, and Eliza nods.

“It looks worse than it is. I’m fine.” A long moment. “He’s not usually — like that,” she says. It takes Maria a moment to catch up; she hadn’t been thinking about Hamilton at all, really. Eliza looks unspeakably weary. “I know what it looks like, but don’t — he’s just… you know what, sorry. Forget it. I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”

“It’s fine, I get it,” Maria says after a moment, quietly, and she does. “When it’s good, it’s good.”

“Something like that.”

The next time she sees him Mulligan’s watching them, appraising. He doesn’t say anything.

 

*

 

She’s pretty sure they fuck around on each other; every so often she’ll see one or the other getting cozy with a patron, not at all subtle about it. Maria recognizes that game; god knows she’s played it herself enough times, winding someone up just to pick a fight later and make the reconciliation that much sweeter.

In the idle kind of way she wonders about strangers on the subway she catches herself imagining how Eliza and Hamilton fuck, if they do. If he spends hours at a time with his face between her thighs, or if they settle for a half-drunk tumble when neither can sleep, lights off. If she scratches his back up when he fucks her so he can feel it later when he’s mixing drinks and rubbing shoulders, his shirt catching in the raw spots. Or if they sleep turned away from each other, not touching.

Somewhere in there her wondering slips down into dreaming. She’s walking through the bar’s basement, and that’s her first clue: she’s never been down here, never had reason to be. Can’t hear her own footsteps, not quite floating. Doesn't know what she's looking for in this narrow hallway, grey and featureless in the half-dark, lined all the way down with identical doors. All closed except for the last, which is ajar, weak yellow light spilling out onto the concrete floor.  
  
She can hear the tangle of sounds as she gets closer, unmistakable: ragged breathing in two rhythms, voices, the clink of a belt buckle. She reaches the crack in the doorway and takes it in at a glance: the cramped, closet-sized office, Eliza bent over the desk. Cheek to the battered wood, black dress rucked up around her hips. Hamilton pressed close behind her, one hand in her hair.  
  
Maria doesn't think to move as Hamilton catches sight of her. He doesn't even flicker surprise, just grins at her, slow as molasses. "Bets," he says to Eliza, a self-satisfied kind of rumble, pitched low. "Look."  
  
Eliza straightens up to look at her, flushed and disheveled with the straps of her dress falling off her shoulders. Same thing, no shock at all, like they've been waiting for Maria to show up. Hamilton pushes a hand up under her skirt, frustratingly out of Maria’s line of sight; her breathing hitches telltale and she laughs, pleased, a little rough. Offers Maria her own hand and says, all softly, a request, "Come here.”

Maria goes. Light on her feet. Eliza kisses her and Hamilton’s at her back, his voice in her ear. It’s white noise, can’t make it out but she can feel it. No reason her heart should be pounding so loudly, no reason she should be drowning, shouldn’t be able to tell whose hands are whose. Hamilton and Eliza kiss over her shoulder.

She wakes abruptly, sweating and disoriented.

 

*

 

They both avoid her for a while next time she shows up, and at first she thinks she’s just being paranoid but then Eliza catches her eye and mouths _hey,_ Hamilton’s fingers at her hip like usual — must squeeze a little because Eliza visibly flinches, more surprise than pain, and turns away a fraction.

“I can’t figure you out,” Hamilton tells her at some point, apropos of nothing. She doesn’t put too much thought into that statement; she’s tired, it’s crowded and hot in here, and he’s drunk. Just a little unsteady on his feet.

“What’s that mean?” she asks mildly. A bit tipsy herself, not that she usually makes a point of drinking alone.

“Do you know you never smile?” he says. They’re close; he’s a close talker to begin with, she’s noticed, and now they’re nearly touching, pushed together by the crowd and the level of noise in the room. It’s almost affectionate, teasing — but he doesn’t know her well enough to tease and there’s an edge to it she really does not like. “Not with your teeth. You do this coy I’ve-got-a-secret thing.”

“Do I,” she says. Still, she’s prepared to just write it off as meaningless, shooting off at the mouth just to hear himself, until his next question.

“You got secrets, Maria Lewis?” Draws out her name just a little, unless she’s imagining it. He’s kind of in her periphery, off to one side, so she can’t quite make out his expression but she can hear him smiling.

“Don’t we all,” she says lightly, for want of something else to say. She can do this, just double-talk and deflect until he gives up.

“Don’t we all,” he repeats, slowly, and she can tell he’s nodding. God, he’s such an asshole. “You’re not wrong, I suppose. Not all of us stand to lose quite as much as others in the event our secrets — ah. Stop being secrets. As it were.”

She’s thrown for a second and then it clicks, what he’s doing. Or trying to do. And it’s ridiculous, surreal. “Are you threatening me?”

Hamilton laughs, and it’s hollow. He’s clearly playing at dangerous, confident, but it doesn’t fit him, sits across his shoulders like a cheap suit. She wonders who he’s trying to channel as he says, “That’s such an _ugly_ word, isn’t it?” Tips his wrist, swirls the contents of his glass, idly. “I’m just making conversation, Maria.” Her name sounds wrong in his mouth. He leans in a little closer and does touch her, then, a hand on her elbow; perfectly innocent-looking, considering how loud it is in here. His lips brush her ear and she fights back an actual physical reaction, a shudder, pure revulsion. It comes out in a low, steady trail: “I’m not threatening you. If I were, I’d tell you that Mulligan and I go way back, and he’s got a certain… knack, let’s say, for finding out what he wants to know, or what I want to know. It’s amazing, the kinds of things people trust a bartender to keep quiet about. You understand. If I were threatening you, I would tell you that while I don’t know _exactly_ what you did to James, or particularly care, I can find out, and I can be persuaded to care, and I have it on good authority that I am not an easy man to get rid of.” He’s quiet, dead calm; every word comes out rapid-fire and carefully, precisely chosen. His fingers tightening steadily around her arm as he goes on and it’s starting to hurt but she will not wince. “I don’t like to share. It’s a weakness, I confess, but I never have and I’ll be damned if I’m about to start. Now, I want to be very sure you understand: I’m not threatening you. I wouldn’t dare. I’m just asking you nicely to get the _fuck_ away from my wife and stay there.”

“Jesus Christ, Hamilton —” Who the fuck talks like this? He’s seen too many movies, real people don’t do this, and she’s poised to say as much but he cuts her off.

“Hey, hey, no, I’m not finished. You tell Eliza whatever you need to tell her, bearing in mind firstly that I’ll hear about it, and secondly that if you ever so much as dream about coming back here, you will regret it. I will make you regret it, and that’s putting it politely. I do hope I’ve made myself perfectly clear.”

What she thinks is, well, you’re not one to do things by halves, are you. What she says is, “You can’t prove anything.” It sounds completely transparent to her own ears. Eliza’s voice floating toward them from up front, distant: _those hard-luck stories they all hand me…_

Without missing a beat: “Don’t make me have to try, then, hm?” He steps back, lets go of her; she’s flooded with bizarre relief even as her heart’s racing, and he returns to a normal tone. His eyes look black in the half-dark and that oily air he’s always had seems cartoonishly, exponentially worse now, the sleaze rolling off of him in waves. “If you’ll excuse me. Enjoy the rest of your evening.” He polishes off the remains of his drink, sets the glass down on an empty table and disappears back into the crush without another word.

Enough, now,Maria tells herself. Doesn’t pay her tab before she leaves.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Lindsay's the only person who cares about this! so. title's from Dessa's "Dixon's Girl", which is the entire reason this exists. 
> 
> [here I am on the tumblr](www.youbuiltcathedrals.tumblr.com), come say hi.


End file.
